As part of Culture Days weekend launch, the Gallery hosts a free public performance at Brunswick Point (at the end of River Rd in Ladner, or 2524 River Rd). Artist Amy-Claire Huestis and collaborators present this site-specific community piece for choir, dance, and kinship with nature.
Please join us for this community performance in an internationally recognized area of critical ecological importance for migratory birds in the Fraser River Estuary. We invite you to attend, visit the site, or follow the durational score as together we perform a mytho-poetic story cycle on the dyke trail.
This piece celebrates kinship with birds and the interconnectedness of all things—MOTHLIKE/silvery-blue tells a story of human/more-than-human transformation; Silvery Blue is a person, a butterfly (a ghost), the shimmering colour of the land.
This site-specific durational work animates artworks in the story cycle, as a choir from the BC Choral Federation, volunteers, and artist participants follow an experimental score, performing roles in dance, sound, walking, and reading at the sites over a two-week period. Visitors to the sites and attendees will encounter what is a delicate piece in both diffused and congregated elements.
The performance culminates at sunset on the Autumnal Equilux on September 24th, with a procession from 5 – 7 pm. Omar Zubair (composer, NYC), Jody Sperling (dancer/choreographer, NYC), Rachel Harris (dancer, Montréal), and Brigid Coult (choir director, Richmond Chorus) come together in community with the wild kin of the marshland for this participatory event.
This project is in consultation with Hwlitsum First Nation, and is funded by Canada Council for the Arts, KPU, and Richmond Art Gallery. It is in partnership with Birds Canada, and is concurrent with the community guided walk project, walk quietly: ts’ekw’unshun kws qulutun (walk with respect and care for the shoreline).
The communal performance stems from artist Amy-Claire Huestis’s ongoing research in the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) of Hwuli’tth’um (Brunswick Point in Ladner), an area of critical ecological importance for migratory birds within the Fraser River Estuary, in the ancestral and present-day lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the Hul’qumi’num Mustimuhw (Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group of Seven Coast Salish Nations), scəw̓aθən (Tsawwassen), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam).
To learn more about the artists and the score, visit the artist’s website.